Digital marketing experts regularly suggest that small businesses start a blog to enhance website traffic and spread the word about the company. However, blogs require a significant amount of time and effort. How do you know you'll see a return on your investment?
To get the best results, you need to produce quality content with the help of your expertise or a digital marketing company. Here are five ways a blog can benefit your company.
How Blogs Can Benefit Your Business
1. Keep Your Website Relevant
Have you stumbled across an outdated website? It's essential to keep your website relevant. You need to update your website regularly. One of the easiest ways to update your website is to post a daily or weekly blog.
Customers notice when you take the time to post on your website regularly. It instills a sense of confidence that the rest of the information is current and updated. Google algorithms pay attention to your efforts, too. Regular blog posts make you appear active, increasing your odds of appearing in search engine results.
2. Provide Informational Articles for Online Browsers
Your blog should follow an intent-based strategy. That means that you want to write blog posts that acknowledge and resolve the readers' problems. Use your blog to connect to your audience and give them something they need.
How do you know what to write about? Start with a simple Google search. Type in keywords related to your industry. If we use a small plumbing company as an example, you may search "tankless water heater installation," "water heater repair," or "drain cleaning."
Your initial search will show you what information already exists and what related questions customers search. Continue to search trending topics in your industry and gather topic ideas for future articles. Stay current by discussing new issues and incorporating your products and services.
Base your blogs on the topics and questions you find online. However, if possible, skew the article ever so slightly to make it unique compared to the other information. You also want to make your blog more detailed and informative so that readers feel like they get more from your blog than the competition.
Popular blog ideas include:
How-To (Step By Step Guides)
Product Descriptions
Product Comparisons
Community Involvement
Anecdotal/ Personal Experience
Informational
Interviews
Entertainment
These blogs provide a service to potential customers. They can also work to promote your services, so they serve a dual purpose.
3. Establish Yourself as an Expert in Your Field
A reader locates one of your how-to articles and finds it informative. The next time they need similar information, they may gravitate toward your articles since they know you provided helpful information the last time. If the next article produces the same results, the reader becomes even more confident in your blog. Soon, your name will become thought of as a valuable resource to that reader. They consider you an expert.
Don't be afraid to show off if you have specialized skills or knowledge not offered by the competition.
Your knowledge alone isn't enough to convince readers, though. To help you gain credibility with readers, don't forget to include external resources, such as authoritative websites and other experts in your field.
While it's great to write your blog collaboratively, keep in mind that you never want to link to a competitor. Even if you link to them to explain why your services are better, you may inadvertently send customers to another website.
4. Expand Your Company's Online Presence
It's great to offer a service to your customers, but your blog will also contribute to your company's online presence. A solid online presence creates credibility. It also puts you at the forefront of the competition.
Your blog will generate traffic to your website. Don't forget to post your articles on social media to make it easy for customers to share them. Posting your blogs keeps you active on social media and gives you another way to reach people instead of solely relying on your website. When readers share your content, it brings you in front of a new audience and expands your online presence even more.
Some people who visit your site may even buy your products or services.
5. Improve Rankings in Search Engine Results
At least 75% of consumers don't go past the first page of Google search results. You want to get on that first page to generate traffic to your site and sales.
While posting regular blogs will increase the likelihood of improving your place in search engine results, there's a bit more to proper content optimization.
Write your blogs with scannable formatting (headers, bullets, and short paragraphs) and link to external authoritative sources.
You need to incorporate keywords into your content. Keywords usually come from what users search for in Google. It's important to put keywords in your title and headers. Don't forget to change the keywords.
For example, if you have the main keyword "benefits of tankless water heaters," you may also want to include "advantages of tankless water heaters" and "why you should upgrade to a tankless water heater." You may also want to have associated keywords, such as "electric water heater" and "gas water heater."
Blogs offer a budget-friendly and effective solution to digital marketing. Of course, you have a lot of work to do. If you need help writing and managing your blog, contact Spin Markket + Digital in Fort Dodge, IA, to learn how they can help with your content-based digital marketing strategy.